Singapore police arrested three males on Thursday, February 27, charging them with fraud after uncovering a scheme to smuggle NVIDIA GPUs to China. This got here after a significant operation on Wednesday, the place the Singapore Police Power and Singapore Customs raided 22 places throughout the nation.
In line with CNA, 9 individuals had been nabbed throughout the raids, however solely three confronted prices thus far. The police confiscated paperwork and electronics to dig deeper into the smuggling plot.
The three charged embody two Singaporeans, Aaron Woon Guo Jie, 41, and Alan Wei Zhaolun, 49, who’re accused of tricking a server provider in 2024. They falsely claimed the NVIDIA gear wouldn’t find yourself with anybody aside from the permitted consumers.
The third suspect, a Chinese language nationwide named Li Ming, 51, acquired caught for mendacity in 2023, saying the chips had been going to an organization known as Luxuriate Your Life, seems, that was a pretend story.
The US has been cracking down on NVIDIA GPU smuggling as a result of they don’t need China getting their arms on this tech. The NVIDIA chips are tremendous highly effective graphics processing items used for gaming and Synthetic Intelligence. By smuggling these chips to china accused had been breaking the strict US export legal guidelines.
If convicted of fraud, these three may withstand 20 years in jail, a effective, or each. The police are nonetheless investigating the opposite six suspects and the businesses tied to the smuggling ring. Singapore Customs can be checking if the group broke legal guidelines beneath the Customs Act and the Regulation of Imports & Exports Act.
Singapore has change into Nvidia’s second largest geographical income in 2024, many suspect that this occurred as a result of Nvidia’s GPUs had been illegally re-exported from Singapore to China.
Nvidia denied all accusations saying that billing places don’t characterize precise vacation spot of GPUs. Nvidia launched an announcement which reads, “Clients use Singapore to centralize invoicing whereas our merchandise are nearly all the time shipped elsewhere, shipments to Singapore had been lower than 2% of fiscal 12 months 2025 complete income.”
Experiences say the US Commerce Division is investigating a Chinese language AI firm, DeepSeek, for probably utilizing these banned chips. Singapore’s authorities has stepped in too.
On February 1, the Ministry of Commerce and Trade warned US corporations right here to observe each Singapore and US legal guidelines. Then, on February 18, Second Minister for Commerce and Trade Tan See Leng instructed parliament that Singapore received’t let companies misuse the nation to dodge export guidelines. Although Singapore doesn’t need to implement US restrictions, Dr. Tan stated corporations ought to nonetheless play by the principles in the event that they apply.
Additionally Learn: South Korea Bans DeepSeek AI Over Privacy Concerns
